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5/26/2019 American Pravda: 9/11 Conspiracy Theories, by Ron Unz - The Unz Review

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American Pravda: 9/11 Conspiracy TheoriesRON UNZ • SEPTEMBER 10, 2018 • 11,000 WORDS • 2,385 COMMENTS

The Unz Review: An Alternative Media SelectionA Collection of Interesting, Important, and Controversial Perspectives Largely Excluded from the American Mainstream Media

Back in 1999 I was invited to join Steve Sailer’s HBD emailgroup[1], where I encountered all sorts of interesting people. Theparticipants were mostly intellectuals or journalists having sharplyheterodox views about racial differences, especially those involvingIQ and crime, and this was reflected in the somewhat euphemistic title,which stood for “Human Bio-Diversity.” A reasonable sense of thecontroversial roster is that less than a year earlier a founding membernamed Glayde Whitney had contributed the Foreword to David Duke’s 700page opus My Awakening.

Although the discussions were intended to focus on scientific matters, itsometimes seemed that half the heated arguments revolved aroundimmigration, and on that highly contentious topic, I was invariablyoutnumbered around 99-to-1, with even the handful of self-proclaimed liberals regularly rangingthemselves against me. Despite such apparently long odds, I regarded myself as always victorious in allthose endless debates, though I would have to admit that 99% of the audience probably would havedisagreed with my verdict.

Particularly contentious was the question of Hispanic immigrant crime rates, which I claimed wereroughly the same as those of whites, a position that virtually all those professors and authorsdenounced as utter lunacy. That particular dispute went on for so many years that eventually I nolonger even bothered to argue the case, but just every now and then provided some satirical jibes onthe topic.

As it happens, the late J. Philippe Rushton, longtime professor of Psychology at the University ofWestern Ontario, was a very occasional participant, and one of my jokes happened to catch his eye.

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Being a bit on the humorless side, he failed to comprehend that my remarks were actually tongue-in-cheek, and after three or four explanatory exchanges, I was finally forced to state my position asexplicitly as possible: “Hispanics have approximately the same crime rates as whites of the same age.”He found my claim totally astonishing, saying that it contradicted absolutely everything he had learnedabout the topic and even threatened to overturn his entire ideological world-view, which he had sopainstakingly built up over his previous thirty years of scientific investigation into human racialdifferences. Therefore, he said I couldn’t possibly be right.

Now Rushton was then widely regarded as being the world’s foremost White Nationalist academicscholar, and he was basically saying that he would eat his own hat if my contradictory racial analysisproved correct. Such an intellectual challenge was just too tempting for me to resist, so I took a briefhiatus from my ongoing software project to work out the crime numbers.

Sure enough, the quantitative results came out exactly the way I knew they would,and I was quite pleased with my resulting cover story “The Myth of HispanicCrime”[2] that ran in the March 2010 issue of The American Conservative. Notonly did my detailed analysis eventually win over Prof. Rushton and most of mymore thoughtful critics, but it also sparked an enormous Internet debate[3], andprobably had widespread influence. I was puzzled at the time that such simplecalculations had not previously been undertaken by America’s vast army of pro-immigrant academics and journalists, and could only wonder whether they haddeliberately avoided investigating the issue for fear that the claims of their anti-immigrant opponents would prove entirely correct[4]. Regardless of the cause, for years afterwardwhenever I Googled “Hispanic Crime” or “Latino Crime”, the search engine would turn up many tensof millions of web pages, but my own article was generally listed in the top five or six results, quiteoften in the top two or three. Even today, nearly a decade later, copies of my article still rankremarkably high in such searches on Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo.

Was my controversial analysis actually correct? Well, when I moved to Palo Alto in 1992, neighboringEast Palo Alto had America’s highest per capita murder rate, which obviously made people here rathernervous. But then over the next 25 years, a vast flood of Hispanic immigrants, both legal and illegal,swept into the region, and the city became overwhelmingly Latino and immigrant. Perhapscoincidentally, the homicide rate fell by some 99%, with the last two years marred by only a singlekilling[5], a murder-suicide involving a couple of elderly white lesbians, while all other crime rateshave also plummeted. Palo Alto is home to the CEOs of Google, Facebook, Apple, and numerous otherleading tech companies, so perhaps rightwing activists should be less than totally mystified why theiranti-immigrant zealotry has generally fallen on rather deaf ears within the Silicon Valley businesscommunity.

Although immigration and Hispanic crime were perennial topics in that HBD group, for a few yearsafter the 9/11 attacks the latter issue was almost entirely displaced by feverish exchanges on Muslimterrorism and the accompanying Clash of Civilizations. Once again, I was invariably on the short end ofa 99-to-1 divide, with nearly all the others in the group claiming that destruction of the World TradeCenter conclusively proved that we needed to close our borders to foreign immigrants. I pointed outthat since the Arab hijackers involved hadn’t been immigrants, but had generally entered our countryon tourist visas, maybe the “War on Terrorism” should be renamed the “War on Tourism,” and we

http://www.unz.com/runz/the-myth-of-hispanic-crime/



should protect America by completely closing our borders to the horrifying risks of the latter. Yeteveryone ignored my sage advice.

The 9/11 attacks themselves had astonished me as much as everyone else on the HBD list, but asidefrom carefully reading the developing story in the New York Times and my other morning newspapers,I was too busy with my work to otherwise follow the topic. At first, everyone seemed certain that therewould soon be a wave of follow-up attacks by the dozens or perhaps even hundreds of other Islamicterrorists remaining in our country, but nothing like that ever happened. After a few weeks had goneby without any further explosions, even small ones, I told the other HBD listmembers that I nowstrongly suspected that every last Al Qaeda terrorist in America had probably died in the suicideattacks of September 11th, and there wasn’t a single remaining operative left behind to commit furthermayhem. Many of the others disagreed with me, but as the months and years went by, my surprisinghypothesis turned out to be correct.

There was one important exception to this pattern, but it actually served to confirm the rule. As Iwrote a few years ago in my original “American Pravda”[6] article:

Consider the almost forgotten anthrax mailing attacks in the weeks after 9/11, whichterrified our dominant East Coast elites and spurred passage of the unprecedented PatriotAct, thereby eliminating many traditional civil-libertarian protections. Every morningduring that period the New York Times and other leading newspapers carried articlesdescribing the mysterious nature of the deadly attacks and the complete bafflement of theFBI investigators. But evenings on the Internet I would read stories by perfectlyrespectable journalists such as Salon’s Laura[7] Rozen[8] or the staff of the HartfordCourant [9]providing a wealth of additional detail and pointing to a likely suspect andmotive.

Although the letters carrying the anthrax were purportedly written by an Arab terrorist, theFBI quickly determined that the language and style indicated a non-Arab author, whiletests pointed to the bioweapons research facility at Ft. Detrick, Md., as the probable sourceof the material. But just prior to the arrival of those deadly mailings, military police atQuantico, Va., had also received an anonymous letter warning that a former Ft. Detrickemployee, Egyptian-born Dr. Ayaad Assaad, might be planning to launch a nationalcampaign of bioterrorism. Investigators quickly cleared Dr. Assaad, but the very detailednature of the accusations revealed inside knowledge of his employment history and the Ft.Detrick facilities. Given the near-simultaneous posting of anthrax envelopes and falsebioterrorism accusations, the mailings almost certainly came from the same source, andsolving the latter case would be the easiest means of catching the anthrax killer.

Who would have attempted to frame Dr. Assaad for bioterrorism? A few years earlier hehad been involved in a bitter personal feud with a couple of his Ft. Detrick coworkers,including charges of racism, official reprimands, and angry recriminations all around.When an FBI official shared a copy of the accusatory letter with a noted language-forensicsexpert and allowed him to compare the text with the writings of 40 biowarfare labemployees, he found a perfect match with one of those individuals. For years I told myfriends that anyone who spent 30 minutes with Google could probably determine the nameand motive of the likely anthrax killer, and most of them successfully met my challenge.



This powerful evidence received almost no attention in the major national media, nor isthere any indication that the FBI ever followed up on any of these clues or interrogated thenamed suspects. Instead, investigators attempted to pin the attacks on a Dr. Steven Hatfillbased on negligible evidence, after which he was completely exonerated and won a $5.6million settlement from the government for its years of severe harassment. Later, similarhounding of researcher Bruce Ivins and his family led to his suicide, after which the FBIdeclared the case closed, even though former colleagues of Dr. Ivins demonstrated that hehad had no motive, means, or opportunity. In 2008, I commissioned a major 3,000-wordcover story in my magazine[10] summarizing all of this crucial evidence, and once againalmost no one in the mainstream media paid the slightest attention.

Unlike the 9/11 attacks themselves, I had closely followed the Anthraxterrorism, and was shocked by the strange silence of the governmentinvestigators and our leading newspapers. At the time, I generally assumedthat the attacks were totally unconnected with 9/11 and merelyopportunistic, but I simply couldn’t understand how a few minutes a day ofreading Salon and the Hartford Courant on the web could seemingly solvethe front-page mystery that was baffling everyone at the FBI and the NewYork Times. It was around that point when I first started to wonder whetherthe elite media publications I had always relied upon were merely “OurAmerican Pravda”[11] under a different name. Moreover, a 2014 book byProf. Graeme MacQueen that I only very recently discovered has made areasonably persuasive case that the Anthrax killings were intimatelyconnected to the 9/11 attacks themselves, greatly magnifying the malfeasanceof our media elites.

In theoretical physics, new scientific breakthroughs often occur when known objects are found tobehave in inexplicable ways, thereby suggesting the existence of previously unsuspected forces orparticles. In evolutionary biology, when an organism appears to be acting against its own geneticinterests, we may safely assume that it has probably fallen under the control of some other entity,typically a parasite, which has hijacked the host and is directing its activities toward different ends.While I couldn’t be entirely sure what was happening to the politics and media of my own country,something very odd and disturbing was certainly taking place.

Things soon became much worse. Since the 9/11 attacks had apparently been organized by Osama binLaden and he was based in Afghanistan under Taliban protection, our attack on that country at leastseemed rational. But suddenly there also soon appeared talk of attacking Saddam Hussein’s Iraq,which made absolutely no sense whatsoever.

At first I couldn’t believe what was taking place, simply awed by the breathtaking power anddishonesty of “our American Pravda,” with the establishment media so easily transforming black intowhite and night into day. Once again, quoting from my original article[12] of that title:




The circumstances surrounding our Iraq War demonstrate this, certainly ranking it amongthe strangest military conflicts of modern times. The 2001 attacks in America were quicklyascribed to the radical Islamists of al-Qaeda, whose bitterest enemy in the Middle East hadalways been Saddam Hussein’s secular Baathist regime in Iraq. Yet through misleadingpublic statements, false press leaks, and even forged evidence such as the “yellowcake”documents, the Bush administration and its neoconservative allies utilized the compliantAmerican media to persuade our citizens that Iraq’s nonexistent WMDs posed a deadlynational threat and required elimination by war and invasion. Indeed, for several yearsnational polls showed that a large majority of conservatives and Republicans actuallybelieved that Saddam was the mastermind behind 9/11 and the Iraq War was being foughtas retribution. Consider how bizarre the history of the 1940s would seem if America hadattacked China in retaliation for Pearl Harbor.

True facts were easily available to anyone paying attention in the years after 2001, butmost Americans do not bother and simply draw their understanding of the world fromwhat they are told by the major media, which overwhelmingly—almost uniformly—backedthe case for war with Iraq; the talking heads on TV created our reality. Prominentjournalists across the liberal and conservative spectrum eagerly published the mostridiculous lies and distortions passed on to them by anonymous sources, and stampededCongress down the path to war.

The result was what my late friend Lt. Gen. Bill Odom[13] rightly called the “greateststrategic disaster in United States history.” American forces suffered tens of thousands ofneedless deaths and injuries, while our country took a huge step toward nationalbankruptcy. Economics Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and others have estimated that withinterest the total long-term cost of our two recent wars may reach as high as $5 or $6trillion, or as much as $50,000 per American household, mostly still unpaid. Meanwhile,economist Edward Wolff has calculated that the Great Recession and its aftermath cut thepersonal net worth of the median American household to $57,000 in 2010 from a figurenearly twice as high three years earlier. Comparing these assets and liabilities, we see thatthe American middle class now hovers on the brink of insolvency, with the cost of ourforeign wars being a leading cause.

But no one involved in the debacle ultimately suffered any serious consequences, and mostof the same prominent politicians and highly paid media figures who were responsibleremain just as prominent and highly paid today. For most Americans, reality is whateverour media organs tell us, and since these have largely ignored the facts and adverseconsequences of our wars in recent years, the American people have similarly forgotten.Recent polls show that only half the public today believes that the Iraq War was a mistake.

Author James Bovard has described our society as an “attention deficit democracy,” andthe speed with which important events are forgotten once the media loses interest mightsurprise George Orwell.



As President George W. Bush began inexorably moving America toward the Iraq War in 2002, Irealized with a terrible sinking feeling that the notoriously pro-Israel Neocon zealots had somehowmanaged to seize control of the foreign policy of his administration, a situation I could never haveimagined even in my worst nightmare.

Throughout the 1990s and even afterward, I’d been on very friendly terms with theNeocons in NYC and DC, working closely with them on issues relating toimmigration and assimilation. Indeed, my December 1999 article “California andthe End of White America”[14] was not only one of the longest cover stories everpublished in Commentary, their intellectual flagship, but had even been cited asthe centerpiece of its annual fund-raising letter.

I and my other DC friends were well aware of the fanatical views most Neoconsheld on Israel and Middle Eastern policy, with their foreign policy obsessions beinga regular staple of our jokes and ridicule. But since it seemed unimaginable that they would ever begiven any authority in that sphere, their beliefs had seemed a relatively harmless eccentricity. After all,could anyone possibly imagine fanatical libertarians being placed in total control of the Pentagon,allowing them to immediately disband the American armed forces as a “statist institution”?

Moreover, the complete ideological triumph of the Neocons after the 9/11 attacks was all the moreshocking given the crushing recent defeat they had suffered. During the 2000 presidential campaign,nearly all of the Neocons had aligned themselves with Sen. John McCain, whose battle with Bush forthe Republican nomination had eventually turned quite bitter, and as a consequence, they had beenalmost totally frozen out of high-level appointments. Both Vice President Dick Cheney and DefenseSecretary Donald Rumsfeld were then widely regarded as Bush Republicans, lacking any significantNeocon ties, and the same was true for all the other top administration figures such as Colin Powell,Condeleeza Rice, and Paul O’Neil. Indeed, the only Neoconservative offered a Cabinet spot was LindaChavez, and not only was the Labor Department always regarded as something of a boobie prize in aGOP Administration, but she was ultimately forced to withdraw her nomination due to her “nannyproblems.” The highest-ranking Neocon serving under Bush was Rumsfeld Deputy Paul Wolfowitz,whose seemingly inconsequential appointment had passed without any notice.

Most of the Neocons themselves certainly seemed to recognize thecatastrophic loss they had suffered in the 2000 election. Back in those days,I was on very friendly terms with Bill Kristol, and when I stopped by hisoffice at the Weekly Standard for a chat in the spring of 2001, he seemed ina remarkably depressed state of mind. I remember that at one point, he tookhis head in his hands and wondered aloud whether it was time for him tojust abandon the political battle, resigning his editorship and taking up aquiet post at a DC thinktank. Yet just eight or ten months later, he and hisclose allies were on their way to gaining overwhelming influence in ourgovernment. In an eerie parallel to the aftermath of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’sLenin in Zurich, the totally fortuitous 9/11 attacks and the outbreak of warhad suddenly allowed a small but committed ideological faction to seizecontrol of a gigantic country.

A thorough account of the Neocons and their takeover of the Bush Administration in the aftermath of9/11 is provided by Dr. Stephen J. Sniegoski in his 2008 book The Transparent Cabal, convenientlyavailable on this website:

http://www.unz.com/runz/california-and-the-end-of-white-america/




The Transparent Cabal[15]The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of IsraelSTEPHEN J. SNIEGOSKI[16] • 2008 • 178,000 WORDS

Oddly enough, for many years after 9/11, I paid very little attention to the details of the attacksthemselves. I was entirely preoccupied with building my content-archiving software system[17], andwith the little time I could spend on public policy matters, I was totally focused to the ongoing IraqWar disaster, as well as my terrible fears that Bush might at any moment suddenly extend the conflictto Iran. Despite Neocon lies shamelessly echoed by our corrupt media, neither Iraq nor Iran had hadanything whatsoever to do with the 9/11 attacks, so those events gradually faded in my consciousness,and I suspect the same was true for most other Americans. Al Qaeda had largely disappeared and BinLaden was supposedly hiding in a cave somewhere. Despite endless Homeland Security “threat alerts,”there had been absolutely no further Islamic terrorism on American soil, and relatively little anywhereelse outside the Iraq charnel house. So the precise details of the 9/11 plots had become almostirrelevant to me.

Others I knew seemed to feel the same way. Virtually all the exchanges I had with my old friend BillOdom, the three-star general who had run the NSA for Ronald Reagan, had concerned the Iraq Warand risk it might spread to Iran, as well as the bitter anger he felt toward Bush’s perversion of hisbeloved NSA into an extra-constitutional tool of domestic espionage. When the New York Times brokethe story of the massive extent of domestic NSA spying, Gen. Odom declared that President Bushshould be impeached and NSA Director Michael Hayden court-martialed. But in all the years prior tohis untimely passing in 2008[18], I don’t recall the 9/11 attacks themselves even once coming up as atopic in our discussions.

During those same years, I’d also grown quite friendly with Alexander Cockburn[19], whoseCounterpunch webzine seemed a very rare center of significant opposition to our disastrous foreignpolicy towards Iraq and Iran. I do recall that he once complained to me in 2006 about the “conspiracynuts” of the 9/11 Truth movement[20] who were endlessly harassing his publication, and I extendedmy sympathies. Each of us move in different political circles, and that brief reference may have beenthe first and only time I heard of the 9/11 Truthers during that period, causing me to regard themmore like an eccentric UFO cult than anything else.

Admittedly, I’d occasionally heard of some considerable oddities regarding the 9/11 attacks here andthere, and these certainly raised some suspicions. Most days I would glance at the Antiwar.com frontpage, and it seemed that some Israeli Mossad agents had been caught while filming that plane attacksin NYC, while a much larger Mossad “art student” spy operation around the country[21] had also beenbroken up around the same time. Apparently, FoxNews had even broadcast a multi-part series on thelatter topic[22] before that expose was scuttled and “disappeared” under ADL pressure.

Although I wasn’t entirely sure about the credibility of those claims, it didseem plausible that Mossad had known of the attacks in advance and allowedthem to proceed, recognizing the huge benefits that Israel would derive fromthe anti-Arab backlash. I think I was vaguely aware that Antiwar.comeditorial director Justin Raimondo had published The Terror Enigma, ashort book about some of those strange facts, bearing the provocative



subtitle “9/11 and the Israeli Connection,” but I never considered reading it.In 2007, Counterpunch itself[23] published a fascinating follow-up story[24]about the arrest of that group of Israeli Mossad agents in NYC, who werecaught filming and apparently celebrating the plane attacks on that fatefulday, and the Mossad activity seemed to be far larger than I had previouslyrealized. But all these details remained a little fuzzy in my mind next to myoverriding concerns about wars in Iraq and Iran.

However, by the end of 2008 my focus had begun to change. Bush wasleaving office without having started an Iranian war, and America hadsuccessfully dodged the bullet of an even more dangerous John McCainadministration. I assumed that Barack Obama would be a terrible president and he proved worse thanmy expectations, but I still breathed a huge sigh of relief every day that he was in the White House.

Moreover, around that same time I’d stumbled across an astonishing detail of the 9/11 attacks thatdemonstrated the remarkable depths of my own ignorance. In a Counterpunch article, I’d discoveredthat immediately following the attacks, the supposed terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden hadpublicly denied any involvement[25], even declaring that no good Muslim would have committed suchdeeds.

Once I checked around a little and fully confirmed that fact[26], I was flabbergasted. 9/11 was not onlythe most successful terrorist attack in the history of the world, but may have been greater in itsphysical magnitude than all past terrorist operations combined. The entire purpose of terrorism is toallow a small organization to show the world that it can inflict serious losses upon a powerful state,and I had never previously heard of any terrorist leader denying his role in a successful operation, letalone the greatest in history. Something seemed extremely wrong in the media-generated narrativethat I had previously accepted. I began to wonder if I had been as deluded as the tens of millions ofAmericans in 2003 and 2004 who naively believed that Saddam had been the mastermind behind theSeptember 11th attacks. We live in a world of illusions generated by our media, and I suddenly felt thatI had noticed a tear in the paper-mache mountains displayed in the background of a Hollywood sound-stage. If Osama was probably not the author of 9/11, what other huge falsehoods had I blindlyaccepted?

A couple of years later, I came across a very interesting column by Eric Margolis, a prominentCanadian foreign policy journalist purged from the broadcast media for his strong opposition to theIraq War. He had long published a weekly column in the Toronto Sun and when that tenure ended, heused his closing appearance to run a double-length piece expressing his very strong doubts about theofficial 9/11 story[27], noting that the former director of Pakistani Intelligence insisted that Israel hadbeen behind the attacks.

In addition, an old friend of mine with strong connections to elite Frenchcircles at some point shared what he regarded as an amusing anecdote. Hementioned that at a private dinner party in Paris attended by influentialpolitical and media figures, France’s former Defense Minister had told theother disbelieving guests that the Pentagon had been struck by a missilerather than a civilian jetliner. My friend explained that the minister inquestion was widely regarded as extremely intelligent and level-headed,




thereby proving that even the most highly reputable individuals maysometimes believe in utterly crazy things.

But I interpreted those same facts very differently. France probablypossessed one of the four or five best intelligence service in the world, andsurely a French Defense Minister would be privy to better information abouttrue events than a typical media pundit. In fact, one of the earliest bookssharply questioning the official 9/11 narrative was 9/11: The Big Lie byFrench journalist Thierry Meyssan, which appeared in 2002. This book hadsimilarly argued that the Pentagon had been struck by a missile, perhapssuggesting that it may have been partly influenced by leaks coming fromFrench Intelligence.

I later shared that account of the French minister’s private opinions with avery well-connected American individual situated in our elite Establishment with whom I’d become alittle friendly. His reaction made it clear that he held the same highly unorthodox views about the 9/11attacks, although he had never publicly voiced them lest he risk losing his elite Establishmentmembership card.

I eventually discovered that in 2003 former German Cabinet Minister Andreas von Bülow hadpublished a best-selling book strongly suggesting[28] that the CIA rather than Bin Laden was behindthe attacks, while in 2007 former Italian President Francesco Cossiga had similarly argued[29] that theCIA and the Israeli Mossad had been responsible, claiming that fact was well known among Westernintelligence agencies.

Over the years, all these discordant claims had gradually raised my suspicions about the official 9/11story to extremely strong levels, but it was only very recently that I finally found the time to begin toseriously investigate the subject and read eight or ten of the main 9/11 Truther books, mostly those byProf. David Ray Griffin, the widely acknowledged leader in that field. And his books, together with thewritings of his numerous colleagues and allies, revealed all sorts of very telling details, most of whichhad previously remained unknown to me. I was also greatly impressed by the sheer number ofseemingly reputable individuals of no apparent ideological bent who had become adherents of the 9/11Truth movement over the years.

I certainly attempted to locate contrary books supporting the official 9/11story, but the only one widely discussed was a rather short volume publishedby Popular Mechanics magazine, whose lead researcher turned out to be thecousin of Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff. None of the writersappeared to have any serious academic credentials, and they seemed togenerally ignore or deflect some of the strongest pieces of evidence providedby the numerous scholars and experts involved in the 9/11 Truth movement.Therefore I hardly found their rebuttal persuasive, and I half-wonderedwhether Homeland Security had quietly arranged the publication, whichmight help explain the extremely odd nepotistic coincidence. Popularmagazines simply do not carry the scientific weight of research professors atmajor universities. Perhaps the holes in the official 9/11 narrative were sonumerous and large that no serious scholar could be enlisted to defend it.





9/11 Contradictions[34]DAVID RAY GRIFFIN[35] • 2008 • 110,000 WORDS

9/11 Ten Years Later[36]DAVID RAY GRIFFIN[35] • 2011 • 116,000 WORDS

Cognitive Infiltration[37]DAVID RAY GRIFFIN[35] • 2011 • 66,000 WORDS

When utterly astonishing claims of an extremely controversial nature aremade over a period of many years by numerous seemingly reputableacademics and other experts[30], and they are entirely ignored orsuppressed but never effectively refuted, reasonable conclusions seem topoint in an obvious direction. Based on my very recent readings in this topic,the total number of huge flaws in the official 9/11 story has now grownenormously long, probably numbering in the many dozens. Most of theseindividual items seem reasonably likely and if we decide that even just twoor three of them are correct, we must totally reject the narrative that somany of us have believed for so long.

The numerous Griffin books, beginning with his important 2004 volume TheNew Pearl Harbor[31], provide a very helpful evolving compendium ofthese. Although they all contain a great deal of overlap I might emphasize Debunking 9/11Debunking[32], a 2007 reply to the Popular Mechanics volume, and the 2008 book The New PearlHarbor Revisited[33] as among the more important ones. In addition, he co-edited an important 2007collection of essays with scholar Peter Dale Scott entitled 9/11 and American Empire. For those toocheap or impatient to click a button and order something from Amazon, I’m pleased to provide threeof the shorter Griffin books in HTML form:

Now I am obviously just an amateur in the complex intelligence craft of extracting nuggets of truthfrom a mountain of manufactured falsehood. Although the arguments of the 9/11 Truth Movementseem quite persuasive to me, I would obviously feel much more comfortable if they were seconded byan experienced professional, such as a top CIA analyst. A few years ago, I was shocked to discover thatwas indeed the case.

William Christison had spent 29 years at the CIA[38], rising to become one of its senior figures asDirector of its Office of Regional and Political Analysis, with 200 research analysts serving under him.In August 2006, he published a remarkable 2,700 word article[39] explaining why he no longerbelieved the official 9/11 story and felt sure that the 9/11 Commission Report constituted a cover-up,with the truth being quite different. The following year, he provided a forceful endorsement to one ofGriffin’s books[40], writing that “[There’s] a strong body of evidence showing the official U.S.Government story of what happened on September 11, 2001 to be almost certainly a monstrous seriesof lies.” And Christison’s extreme 9/11 skepticism was seconded by that of many other highly-regardedformer US intelligence officers[41].




We might expect that if a former intelligence officer of Christison’s rank were to denounce the official9/11 report as a fraud and a cover-up, such a story would constitute front-page news. But it was neverreported anywhere in our mainstream media, and I only stumbled upon it a decade later.

Even our supposed “alternative” media outlets were nearly as silent. Throughout the 2000s, Christisonand his wife Kathleen, also a former CIA analyst, had been regular contributors to Counterpunch,publishing many dozens of articles there[42] and certainly were its most highly-credentialed writers onintelligence and national security matters. But editor Alexander Cockburn refused to publish any oftheir 9/11 skepticism, so it never came to my attention at the time. Indeed, when I mentionedChristison’s views to current Counterpunch editor Jeffrey St. Clair a couple of years ago, he wasstunned to discover that the friend he had regarded so very highly had actually become a “9/11Truther.” When media organs serve as ideological gatekeepers, a condition of widespread ignorancebecomes unavoidable.

For those so interested, Christison’s 2006 article mentioned the strong evidence he found in a C-Spanbroadcast of a two-hour panel discussion on the September 11th terrorist attacks[43], and he especiallycited the documentary Loose Change as an excellent summary of many of the flaws in the official 9/11case. The full “Final Cut” version of that film is conveniently available on YouTube:

With so many gaping holes in the official story of the events seventeen years ago, each of us is free tochoose to focus on those we personally consider most persuasive, and I have several of my own.Danish Chemistry professor Niels Harrit was one of the scientists who analyzed the debris of thedestroyed buildings and detected the residual presence of nano-thermite, a military-grade explosivecompound, and I found him quite credible during his hour-long interview[44] on Red Ice Radio. Thenotion that an undamaged hijacker passport was found in an NYC street after the massive, fierydestruction of the skyscrapers is totally absurd, as was the claim that the top hijacker conveniently losthis luggage at one of the airports and it was found to contain a large mass of incriminatinginformation. The testimonies of the dozens of firefighters who heard explosions[45] just before thecollapse of the buildings seems totally inexplicable under the official story. The sudden total collapse ofBuilding Seven, never hit by any jetliners is also extremely implausible.

Let us now suppose that the overwhelming weight of evidence is correct, and concur with high-rankingformer CIA intelligence analysts, distinguished academics, and experienced professionals that the 9/11attacks were not what they appeared to be. We recognize the extreme implausibility that three hugeskyscrapers in New York City suddenly collapsed at free-fall velocity into their own footprints after justtwo of them were hit by airplanes, and also that a large civilian jetliner probably did not strike thePentagon leaving absolutely no wreckage and only a small hole. What actually did happen, and moreimportantly, who was behind it?

The first question is obviously impossible to answer without an honest and thorough officialinvestigation of the evidence. Until that occurs, we should not be surprised that numerous, somewhatconflicting hypotheses have been advanced and debated within the confines of the 9/11 Truthcommunity. But the second question is probably the more important and relevant one, and I think ithas always represented a source of extreme vulnerability to 9/11 Truthers.



The most typical approach, as generally followed in the numerous Griffin books, is to avoid the issueentirely and focus solely on the gaping flaws in the official narrative. This is a perfectly acceptableposition but leaves all sorts of serious doubts. What organized group would have been sufficientlypowerful and daring to carry off an attack of such vast scale against the central heart of the world’ssole superpower? And how were they possibly able to orchestrate such a massively effective media andpolitical cover-up, even enlisting the participation of the U.S. government itself?

The much smaller fraction of 9/11 Truthers who choose to address this “whodunit” question seem to beoverwhelmingly concentrated among rank-and-file grassroots activists rather than the prestigiousexperts, and they usually answer “inside job!” Their widespread belief seems to be that the top politicalleadership of the Bush Administration, probably including Vice President Dick Cheney and DefenseSecretary Donald Rumsfeld, had organized the terrorist attacks, either with or without the knowledgeof their ignorant nominal superior, President George W. Bush. The suggested motives includedjustifying military attacks against various countries, supporting the financial interests of the powerfuloil industry and military-industrial complex, and enabling the destruction of traditional American civilliberties. Since the vast majority of politically-active Truthers seem to come from the far left of theideological spectrum, they regard these notions as logical and almost self-evident.

Although not explicitly endorsing those Truther conspiracies, filmmaker Michael Moore’s leftist boxoffice hit Fahrenheit 9/11 seemed to raise such similar suspicions. His small budget documentaryearned an astonishing $220 million by suggesting that the very close business ties between the Bushfamily, Cheney, the oil companies, and the Saudis were responsible for the Iraq War aftermath of theterrorist attacks, as well as a domestic crackdown on civil liberties, which was part-and-parcel of theright-wing Republican agenda.

Unfortunately, this apparently plausible picture seems to have almost nobasis in reality. During the drive to the Iraq War, I read Times articlesinterviewing numerous top oil men in Texas who expressed total puzzlementat why America was planning to attack Saddam, saying that they could onlyassume that President Bush knew something that they themselves did not.Saudi Arabian leaders were adamantly opposed to an American attack onIraq, and made every effort to prevent it. Prior to his joining the BushAdministration, Cheney had served as CEO of Halliburton, an oil servicesgiant, and his firm had heavily lobbied for the lifting of U.S. economicsanctions against Iraq. Prof. James Petras, a scholar of strong Marxistleanings, published an excellent 2008 book entitled Zionism, Militarism,and the Decline of US Power in which he conclusively demonstrated thatZionist interests rather than those of the oil industry had dominated theBush Administration in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, and promoted the Iraq War.

As for Michael Moore’s film, I remember at the time sharing a laugh with a (Jewish) friend of mine,both of us finding it ridiculous that a government so overwhelmingly permeated by fanatically pro-Israel Neocons was being portrayed as in thrall to the Saudis. Not only did the plot of Moore’s filmdemonstrate the fearsome power of Jewish Hollywood, but its huge success suggested that most of theAmerican public had apparently never heard of the Neocons.

Bush critics properly ridiculed the president for his tongue-tied statement that the 9/11 terrorists hadattacked America “for its freedoms” and Truthers have reasonably branded as implausible the claimsthat the massive attacks were organized by a cave-dwelling Islamic preacher. But the suggestion that




that they were led and organized by the top figures of the Bush Administration seems even morepreposterous.

Cheney and Rumsfeld had both spent decades as stalwarts of the moderate pro-business wing of theRepublican Party, each serving in top government positions and also as CEOs of major corporations.The notion that they capped their careers by joining a new Republican administration in early 2001and immediately set about organizing a gigantic false-flag terrorist attack upon the proudest towers ofour largest city together with our own national military headquarters, intending to kill many thousandsof Americans in the process, is too ridiculous to even be part of a leftist political satire.

Let’s step back a bit. In the entire history of the world, I can think of no documented case in which thetop political leadership of a country launched a major false-flag attack upon its own centers of powerand finance and tried to kill large numbers of its own people. The America of 2001 was a peaceful andprosperous country run by relatively bland political leaders focused upon the traditional Republicangoals of enacting tax-cuts for the rich and reducing environmental regulations. Too many Trutheractivists have apparently drawn their understanding of the world from the caricatures of leftist comic-books in which corporate Republicans are all diabolical Dr. Evils, seeking to kill Americans out ofsheer malevolence, and Cockburn was absolutely correct to ridicule them[46] at least on that particularscore.

Consider also the simple practicalities of the situation. The gigantic nature of the 9/11 attacks aspostulated by the Truth movement would have clearly required enormous planning and probablyinvolved the work of many dozens or even hundreds of skilled agents. Ordering CIA operatives orspecial military units to organize secret attacks against civilian targets in Venezuela or Yemen is onething, but directing them to mount attacks against the Pentagon and the heart of New York City wouldbe fraught with stupendous risk.

Bush had lost the popular vote in November 2000 and had only reached the White House because of afew dangling chads in Florida and the controversial decision of a deeply divided Supreme Court. As aconsequence, most of the American media regarded his new administration with enormous hostility. Ifthe first act of such a newly-sworn presidential team had been ordering the CIA or the military toprepare attacks against New York City and the Pentagon, surely those orders would have beenregarded as issued by a group of lunatics, and immediately leaked to the hostile national press.

The whole scenario of top American leaders being the masterminds behind 9/11 is beyond ridiculous,and those 9/11 Truthers who make or imply such claims—doing so without a single shred of solidevidence—have unfortunately played a major role in discrediting their entire movement. In fact, thecommon meaning of the “inside job” scenario is so patently absurd and self-defeating that one mighteven suspect that the claim was encouraged by those seeking to discredit the entire 9/11 Truthmovement as a consequence.

The focus on Cheney and Rumsfeld seems particularly ill-directed. Although I’ve never met nor hadany dealings with either of those individuals, I was quite actively involved in DC politics during the1990s, and can say with some assurance that prior to 9/11, neither of them were regarded as Neocons.Instead, they were the archetypical examples of moderate business-type mainstream Republicans,stretching all the way back to their years at the top of the Ford Administration during the mid-1970s.



Skeptics of this claim may note that they signed the 1997 declaration issued by the Project for the NewAmerican Century[47] (PNAC), a leading Neocon foreign policy manifesto organized by Bill Kristol, butI would regard that as something of a red herring. In DC circles, individuals are always recruiting theirfriends to sign various declarations, which may or may not be indicative of anything, and I rememberKristol trying to get me to sign the PNAC statement as well. Since my private views on that issue wereabsolutely 100% contrary to the Neocon position, which I regarded as foreign policy lunacy, I deflectedhis request and very politely turned him down. But I was quite friendly with him at the time, so if Ihad been someone without strong opinions in that area, I probably would have agreed.

This raises a larger point. By 2000, the Neocons had gained almost total control of all the majorconservative/Republican media outlets and the foreign policy wings of nearly all the similarly alignedthinktanks in DC, successfully purging most of their traditional opponents. So although Cheney andRumsfeld were not themselves Neocons, they were swimming in a Neocon sea, with a very largefraction of all the information they received coming from such sources and with their top aides such as“Scooter” Libby, Paul Wolfowitz, and Douglas Feith being Neocons. Rumsfeld was already somewhatelderly while Cheney had suffered several heart-attacks starting at age 37, so under thosecircumstances it may have been relatively easy for them to be shifted toward certain policy positions.

Indeed, the entire demonization of Cheney and Rumsfeld in anti-Iraq War circles has seemedsomewhat suspicious to me. I always wondered whether the heavily Jewish liberal media had focusedits wrath upon those two individuals in order to deflect culpability from the Jewish Neocons who werethe obvious originators of that disastrous policy; and the same may be true of the 9/11 Truthers, whoprobably feared accusations of anti-Semitism. Regarding that former issue, a prominent Israelicolumnist was characteristically blunt on the matter in 2003, strongly suggesting that 25 Neoconintellectuals[48], nearly all of them Jewish, were primarily responsible for the war. Under normalcircumstances, the president himself would have surely been portrayed as the evil mastermind behindthe 9/11 plot, but “W” was too widely known for his ignorance for such accusations to be credible.

It does seem entirely plausible that Cheney, Rumsfeld, and other top Bush leaders may have beenmanipulated into taking certain actions that inadvertently furthered the 9/11 plot, while a few lower-level Bush appointees might have been more directly involved, perhaps even as outright conspirators.But I do not think this is the usual meaning of the “inside job” accusation.

So where do we now stand? It seems very likely that the 9/11 attacks were the work of an organizationfar more powerful and professionally-skilled than a rag-tag band of nineteen random Arabs armedwith box-cutters, but also that the attacks were very unlikely to have been the work of the Americangovernment itself. So who actually attacked our country on that fateful day seventeen years ago, killingthousands of our fellow citizens?

Effective intelligence operations are concealed in a hall of mirrors, often extremely difficult foroutsiders to penetrate, and false-flag terrorist attacks certainly fall into this category. But if we apply adifferent metaphor, the complexities of such events may be seen as a Gordian Knot, almost impossibleto disentangle, but vulnerable to the sword-stroke of asking the simple question “Who benefited?”

America and most of the world certainly did not, and the disastrous legacy of that fateful day havetransformed our own society and wrecked many other countries. The endless American wars soonunleashed have already cost us many trillions of dollars and set our nation on the road to bankruptcy



while killing or displacing many millions of innocent Middle Easterners. Most recently, that resultingflood of desperate refugees has begun engulfing Europe, and the peace and prosperity of that ancientcontinent is now under severe threat.

Our traditional civil liberties and constitutional protections have been drastically eroded, with oursociety having taken long steps toward becoming an outright police state. American citizens nowpassively accept unimaginable infringements on their personal freedoms, all originally begun under theguise of preventing terrorism.

I find it difficult to think of any country in the world that clearly gained as a result of the 9/11 attacksand America’s military reaction, with one single, solitary exception.

During 2000 and most of 2001, America was a peaceful prosperous country, but a certain small MiddleEastern nation had found itself in an increasingly desperate situation. Israel then seemed to be fightingfor its life against the massive waves of domestic terrorism that constituted the Second PalestinianIntifada.

Ariel Sharon was widely believed to have deliberately provoked that uprising in September 2000 bymarching to the Temple Mount backed by a thousand armed police, and the resulting violence andpolarization of Israeli society had successfully installed him as Prime Minister in early 2001. But oncein office, his brutal measures failed to end the wave of continuing attacks, which increasingly took theform of suicide-bombings against civilian targets. Many believed that the violence might soon trigger ahuge outflow of Israeli citizens, perhaps producing a death-spiral for the Jewish state. Iraq, Iran,Libya, and other major Muslim powers were supporting the Palestinians with money, rhetoric, andsometimes weaponry, and Israeli society seemed close to crumbling. I remember hearing from some ofmy DC friends that numerous Israeli policy experts were suddenly seeking berths at Neocon thinktanksso that they could relocate to America.

Sharon was a notoriously bloody and reckless leader, with a long history of undertaking strategicgambles of astonishing boldness, sometimes betting everything on a single roll of the dice. He hadspent decades seeking the Prime Ministership, but having finally obtained it, he now had his back tothe wall, with no obvious source of rescue in sight.

The 9/11 attacks changed everything. Suddenly the world’s sole superpower was fully mobilized againstArab and Muslim terrorist movements, especially those connected with the Middle East. Sharon’s closeNeocon political allies in America used the unexpected crisis as an opportunity to seize control ofAmerica’s foreign policy and national security apparatus, with an NSA staffer later reporting thatIsraeli generals freely roamed the halls of the Pentagon without any security controls. Meanwhile, theexcuse of preventing domestic terrorism was used to implement newly centralized American policecontrols that were employed to harass or even shut down various anti-Zionist political organizations.One of the Israeli Mossad agents arrested by the police in New York City as he and his fellows werecelebrating the 9/11 attacks and producing a souvenir film of the burning World Trade Center towerstold the officers that “We are Israelis…Your problems are our problems.” And so it immediatelybecame.

General Wesley Clark reported that soon after the 9/11 attacks he was informed that a secret militaryplan had somehow come into being under which America would attack and destroy seven majorMuslim countries over the next few years[49], including Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Libya, whichcoincidentally were all of Israel’s strongest regional adversaries and the leading supporters of the



Palestinians. As America began to expend enormous oceans of blood and treasure attacking all ofIsrael’s enemies after 9/11, Israel itself no longer needed to do so. Partly as a consequence, almost noother nation in the world has so enormously improved its strategic and economic situation during thelast seventeen years, even while a large fraction of the American population has become completelyimpoverished during that same period and our national debt has grown to insurmountable levels. Aparasite can often grow fat even as its host suffers and declines.

I have emphasized that for many years after the 9/11 attacks I paid little attention to the details andhad only the vaguest notion that there even existed an organized 9/11 Truth movement. But if someonehad ever convinced me that the terrorist attacks had been false-flag operations and someone otherthan Osama had been responsible, my immediate guess would have been Israel and its Mossad.

Certainly no other nation in the world can remotely match Israel’s track-record of remarkably boldhigh-level assassinations and false-flag attacks, terrorist and otherwise, against other countries, evenincluding America and its military. Furthermore, the enormous dominance of Jewish and pro-Israelelements in the American establishment media and increasingly that of many other major countries inthe West has long ensured that even when the solid evidence of such attacks was discovered, very fewordinary Americans would ever hear those facts.

The pattern of behavior is really quite remarkable. Even prior to the establishment of the State ofIsrael, the various Zionist factions assassinated Lord Moyne, the British Minister for the Middle East,and Count Folke Bernadotte, the UN Peace Negotiator, and made unsuccessful attempts to killPresident Harry S. Truman[50] and British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin[51], while even discussingthe possible assassination of Prime Minister Winston Churchill[52]. There seems considerable evidencethat the Israeli Mossad subsequently played a central role in the assassination of President John F.Kennedy[53] because of the enormous pressure he was applying to persuade Israel to abandon itsnuclear weapons development. Mossad defector Victor Ostrovsky warned the American governmentthat Israel was planning to assassinate President George H.W. Bush in the early 1990s due to the bitterconflict over financial aid, and apparently those warnings were taken seriously[54]. As recently as2012, the editor of the largest Jewish newspaper in Atlanta publicly called for the assassination ofPresident Barack Obam[55]a over his policy differences with Israel.

The history of military and terrorist attacks is even more striking. One of history’s largest terroristattacks prior to 9/11 was the 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem[56] by Zionistmilitants dressed as Arabs, which killed 91 people and largely destroyed the structure. In the famousLavon Affair of 1954[57], Israeli agents launched a wave of terrorist attacks against Western targets inEgypt, intending to have those blamed on anti-Western Arab groups. There are strong claims[58] thatin 1950 Israeli Mossad agents launched a wave of false-flag terrorist bombings against Jewish targetsin Baghdad, successfully using those violent methods to help persuade Iraq’s thousand-year Jewishcommunity to emigrate to the Jewish state. In 1967, Israel launched a deliberate air and sea attackagainst the U.S.S. Liberty[59], intending to leave no survivors, and ultimately killing or wounding over200 American servicemen before word of the attack reached our Sixth Fleet and it was called off.

The enormous extent of pro-Israel influence in world political and media circles meant that none ofthese brutal attacks ever drew serious retaliation, and in nearly all cases, they were quickly throwndown the memory hole, so that today probably no more than one in a hundred Americans is evenaware of them. Furthermore, most of these incidents came to light due to chance circumstances, so we



may easily suspect that many other attacks of a similar nature have never become part of the historicalrecord.

Once we accept that the 9/11 attacks were probably a false-flag operation, a central clue to the likelyperpetrators has been their extraordinary success in ensuring that such a wealth of enormouslysuspicious evidence has been totally ignored by virtually the entire American media, whether liberal orconservative, left-wing or right-wing.

The only other such extreme cases that come to my mind almost invariably involve either Jewish issuesor Israel. For example, virtually no Americans are today aware of the close Nazi-Zionist economicpartnership of the 1930s[60] that played a crucial role in the establishment of the State of Israel.Similarly, although our Western media has enshrined it as one of the central events of the twentiethcentury, there seems a good likelihood that the Jewish Holocaust of the Second World War is eithersubstantially or almost entirely fraudulent[61]. Even highly successful false-flag terrorist operationswill tend to leave behind a certain number of individual clues, and possessing the media power tocause that evidence to vanish from perceived reality is an extremely important tool for such operations.

In the particular case at hand, the considerable number of zealously pro-Israel Neocons situated justbeneath the public surface of the Bush Administration in 2001 could have greatly facilitated both thesuccessful organization of the attacks and their effective cover-up and concealment, with Libby,Wolfowitz, Feith, and Richard Perle being merely the most obvious names. Whether such individualswere knowing conspirators or merely had personal ties allowing them to be exploited in furthering theplot is entirely unclear.

Most of this information must surely have long been apparent to knowledgeable observers, and Istrongly suspect that many individuals who had paid much greater attention than myself to the detailsof the 9/11 attacks may have quickly formed a tentative conclusion along these same times. But forobvious social and political reasons, there is a great reluctance to publicly point the finger of blametowards Israel on a matter of such enormous magnitude. Hence, except for a few fringe activists hereand there, such dark suspicions remained private.

Meanwhile, the leaders of the 9/11 Truth movement probably feared they would be destroyed by mediaaccusations of deranged anti-Semitism if they had ever expressed even a whisper of such ideas. Thispolitical strategy may have been necessary, but by failing to name any plausible culprit, they created avacuum that was soon filled by “useful idiots” who shouted “inside job!” while pointing an accusingfinger toward Cheney and Rumfeld, and thereby did so much to discredit the entire 9/11 Truthmovement.

This unfortunate conspiracy of silence finally ended in 2009 when Dr. Alan Sabrosky, former Directorof Studies at the US Army War College, stepped forward and publicly declared[62] that the IsraeliMossad had very likely been responsible for the 9/11 attacks, writing a series of columns on thesubject, and eventually presenting his views in a number of media interviews, along with additionalanalyses[63].



Obviously, such explosive charges never reached the pages of my morning Times, but they did receiveconsiderable if transitory coverage in portions of the alternative media, and I remember seeing thelinks very prominently featured at Antiwar.com and widely discussed elsewhere. I had neverpreviously heard of Sabrosky, so I consulted my archiving system and immediately discovered that hehad a perfectly respectable record[64] of publication on military affairs in mainstream foreign policyperiodicals and had also held a series of academic appointments at prestigious institutions. Readingone or two of his articles on 9/11, I felt he made a rather persuasive case for Mossad involvement, withsome of his information already known to me but much of it not.

Since I was very busy with my software work and had never spent any time investigating 9/11 orreading any of the books on the topic, my belief in his claims back then was obviously quite tentative.But now that I have finally looked into the topic in much greater detail and done a great deal ofreading, I think it seems quite likely that his 2009 analysis was entirely correct.

I would particularly recommend his long 2011 interview on Iranian Press TV, which I first watched justa couple of days ago. He came across as highly credible and forthright in his claims:

He also provided a pugnacious conclusion in a much longer 2010 radio interview:[65]

Sabrosky focused much of his attention upon a particular segment of a Dutch documentary film on the9/11 attacks produced several years earlier. In that fascinating interview, a professional demolitionexpert named Danny Jowenko who was largely ignorant of the 9/11 attacks immediately identified thefilmed collapse of WTC Building 7 as a controlled-demolition, and the remarkable clip was broadcastworldwide on Press TV and widely discussed across the Internet.

And by a very strange coincidence, just three days after Jowenko’s broadcast video interview hadreceived such heavy attention, he had the misfortune to die in a frontal collision with a tree inHolland[66]. I’d suspect that the community of professional demolition experts is a small one, andJowenko’s surviving industry colleagues may have quickly concluded that serious misfortune mightvisit those who rendered controversial expert opinions on the collapse of the three World Trade Centertowers.

Meanwhile, the ADL soon mounted a huge and largely successful[67] effort to have Press TV banned inthe West for promoting “anti-Semitic conspiracy theories,” even persuading YouTube to entirelyeliminate the huge video archive of those past shows, notably including Sabrosky’s long interview.

Most recently, Sabrosky provided an hour-long presentation at this June’s Deep Truth video panelconference[68], during which he expressed considerable pessimism about America’s politicalpredicament, and suggested that the Zionist control over our politics and media had grown evenstronger over the last decade.

His discussion was soon rebroadcast by Guns & Butter[69], a prominent progressive radio program,which as a consequence was soon purged from its home station[70] after seventeen years of greatnational popularity and strong listener support.



The late Alan Hart[71], a very distinguished British broadcast journalist and foreign correspondent,also broke his silence in 2010[72] and similarly pointed to the Israelis as the likely culprits behind the9/11 attacks. Those interested may wish to listen to his extended interview[73].

Journalist Christopher Bollyn was one of the first writers to explore thepossible Israeli links to the 9/11 attacks, and the details contained in his longseries of newspaper articles are often quoted by other researchers. In 2012,he gathered together this material and published it in the form of a bookentitled Solving 9-11, thereby making his information on the possible role ofthe Israeli Mossad available to a much wider audience, with a version beingavailable online[74]. Unfortunately his printed volume severely suffers fromthe typical lack of resources available to the writers on the political fringe,with poor organization and frequent repetition of the same points due to itsorigins in a set of individual articles, and this may diminish its credibilityamong some readers. So those who purchase it should be forewarned aboutthese serious stylistic weaknesses.

Probably a much better compendium of the very extensive evidence pointingto the Israeli hand behind the 9/11 attacks has been more recently providedby French journalist Laurent Guyénot, both in his 2017 book JFK-9/11: 50Years of the Deep State and also his 8,500 word article “9/11 was an IsraeliJob”[75], published concurrently with this one and providing a far greaterwealth of detail than is contained here. While I would not necessarilyendorse all of his claims and arguments, his overall analysis seems fullyconsistent with my own.

These writers have provided a great deal of material in support of the IsraeliMossad Hypothesis, but I would focus attention on just one important point.We would normally expect that terrorist attacks resulting in the complete destruction of three giganticoffice buildings in New York City and an aerial assault on the Pentagon would be an operation ofenormous size and scale, involving very considerable organizational infrastructure and manpower. Inthe aftermath of the attacks, the US government undertook great efforts to locate and arrest thesurviving Islamic conspirators, but scarcely managed to find a single one. Apparently, they had all diedin the attacks themselves or otherwise simply vanished into thin air.

But without making much effort at all, the American government did quicklyround up and arrest some 200 Israeli Mossad agents[76], many of whomhad been based in exactly the same geographical locations as the purported19 Arab hijackers. Furthermore, NYC police arrested some of these agentswhile they were publicly celebrating the 9/11 attacks[77], and others werecaught driving vans in the New York area containing explosives or theirresidual traces. Most of these Mossad agents refused to answer anyquestions, and many of those who did failed polygraph tests, but undermassive political pressure all were eventually released and deported back toIsrael. A couple of years ago, much of this information was very effectivelypresented in a short video available on YouTube.





There is another fascinating tidbit that I have very rarely seen mentioned.Just a month after the 9/11 attacks, two Israelis were caught sneakingweapons and explosives into the Mexican Parliament building, a story thatnaturally produced several banner-headlines in leading Mexican newspapersat the time but was greeted by total silence in the American media.Eventually, under massive political pressure, all charges were dropped andthe Israeli agents were deported back home. This remarkable incident wasonly reported on a small Hispanic-activist website[78], and discussed in afew other places[79]. Some years ago I easily found the scanned front pagesof the Mexican newspapers reporting those dramatic events on the Internet,but I can no longer easily locate them. The details are obviously somewhatfragmentary and possibly garbled, but certainly quite intriguing.

One might speculate that if supposed Islamic terrorists had followed up their 9/11 attacks by attackingand destroying the Mexican parliament building a month later, Latin American support for America’smilitary invasions in the Middle East would have been greatly magnified. Furthermore, any scenes ofsuch massive destruction in the Mexican capital by Arab terrorists would surely have been broadcastnon-stop on Univision, America’s dominant Spanish-language network, fully solidifying Hispanicsupport for President Bush’s military endeavors.

Although my growing suspicions about the 9/11 attacks stretch back a decade or more, my seriousinvestigation of the topic is quite recent, so I am certainly a newcomer to the field. But sometimes anoutsider can notice things that may escape the attention of those who have spent so many years deeplyimmersed in a given topic.

From my perspective, it seems that a huge fraction of the 9/11 Truth community spends far too muchof its time absorbed in the particular details of the attacks, debating the precise method by which theWorld Trade Center towers in New York were brought down or what actually struck the Pentagon. Butthese sorts of issues seem of little ultimate significance.

I would argue that the only important aspect of these technical issues is whether the overall evidence issufficiently strong to establish the falsehood of the official 9/11 narrative and also demonstrate that theattacks must have been the work of a highly sophisticated organization with access to advancedmilitary technology rather than rag-tag band of 19 Arabs armed with box-cutters. Beyond that, none ofthose details matter.

In that regard, I believe that the volume of factual material collected by determined researchers overthe last seventeen years has easily met that requirement, perhaps even ten or twenty times over. Forexample, even agreeing upon a single particular item such as the clear presence of nano-thermite, amilitary-grade explosive compound, would immediately satisfy those two criteria. So I see little pointin endless debates over whether nano-thermite was used, or nano-thermite plus something else, or justsomething else entirely. And such complex technical debates may serve to obscure the larger picture,while confusing and intimidating any casually-interested outlookers, thereby being quite counter-productive to the overall goals of the 9/11 Truth movement.




Once we have concluded that the culprits were part of a highly-sophisticated organization, we can thenfocus on the Who and the Why, which surely would be of greater importance than the particulardetails of the How. Yet currently all the endless debate over the How tends to crowd out the Who andthe Why, and I wonder whether this unfortunate situation might even be intentional.

Perhaps one reason is that once sincere 9/11 Truthers do focus on those more important questions, thevast weight of the evidence clearly points in a single direction, implicating Israel and its Mossadintelligence service, with the case being overwhelmingly strong in motive, means, and opportunity.And leveling accusations of blame at Israel and its domestic collaborators for the greatest attack everlaunched against America on our own soil entails enormous social and political risks.

But such difficulties must be weighed against the reality of three thousand American civilian lives andthe subsequent seventeen years of our multi-trillion-dollar wars, which have produced tens ofthousands of dead or wounded American servicemen and the death or displacement of many millionsof innocent Middle Easterners.

The members of the 9/11 Truth movement must therefore ask themselves whether or not “Truth” isindeed the central goal of their efforts.

Related Reading:

9/11 was an Israeli Job[80] by Laurent Guyénot9/11 Contradictions[81] by David Ray GriffinAmerican Pravda: The JFK Assassination, Part II – Who Did It?[82]American Pravda: Holocaust Denial[83]Our American Pravda[84]

Source References

[1] Steve Sailer’s HBD email group => http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/human-biodiversity.html

[2] “The Myth of Hispanic Crime” => http://www.unz.com/runz/the-myth-of-hispanic-crime/

[3] an enormous Internet debate => http://www.unz.com/runz/hispanic-crime-a-guide-to-the-debate/

[4] for fear that the claims of their anti-immigrant opponents would prove entirely correct =>http://www.unz.com/runz/raceiq-the-jason-richwine-affair/

[5] the last two years marred by only a single killing =>https://www.kqed.org/news/11610493/murder-rate-in-east-palo-alto-so-far-this-year-zero

[6] my original “American Pravda” => http://www.unz.com/runz/our-american-pravda/

[7] Laura => https://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/misc2.html#sc020126

[8] Rozen => https://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/misc2a.html#sm020208

http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/human-biodiversity.html

http://www.unz.com/runz/the-myth-of-hispanic-crime/

http://www.unz.com/runz/hispanic-crime-a-guide-to-the-debate/

http://www.unz.com/runz/raceiq-the-jason-richwine-affair/

https://www.kqed.org/news/11610493/murder-rate-in-east-palo-alto-so-far-this-year-zero

http://www.unz.com/runz/our-american-pravda/

https://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/misc2.html#sc020126

https://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/misc2a.html#sm020208



[9] the staff of the Hartford Courant => https://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/hcourant.html

[10] a major 3,000-word cover story in my magazine =>https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-anthrax-files/

[11] “Our American Pravda” => http://www.unz.com/runz/our-american-pravda/

[12] my original article => http://www.unz.com/runz/our-american-pravda/

[13] my late friend Lt. Gen. Bill Odom => http://www.unz.com/runz/the-life-and-legacy-of-lt-gen-william-odom/

[14] “California and the End of White America” => http://www.unz.com/runz/california-and-the-end-of-white-america/

[15] The Transparent Cabal => /book/stephen_j_sniegoski__the-transparent-cabal/

[16] Stephen J. Sniegoski => /book/author/stephen_j_sniegoski/

[17] my content-archiving software system => https://www.unz.com/print/

[18] his untimely passing in 2008 =>https://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/us/05odom.html

[19] quite friendly with Alexander Cockburn => http://www.unz.com/runz/buckleys-unlikely-heir/

[20] the “conspiracy nuts” of the 9/11 Truth movement =>https://www.counterpunch.org/2006/09/09/the-9-11-conspiracy-nuts/

[21] a much larger Mossad “art student” spy operation around the country =>https://web.archive.org/web/20170922100023/http://www.christopherketcham.com:80/wcontent/uploads/2006/11/Israeli%20Art%20Student%20Mystery%20story,%20Salon%2020

[22] a multi-part series on the latter topic => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k43_NKYs50

[23] Counterpunch itself => https://www.counterpunch.org/2007/03/07/ketcham-s-story/

[24] a fascinating follow-up story =>http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17260.htm

[25] Osama bin Laden had publicly denied any involvement =>https://www.counterpunch.org/2011/05/04/bin-laden-the-vindicator/

[26] fully confirmed that fact => http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/16/inv.binladen.denial/

[27] his very strong doubts about the official 9/11 story => http://www.unz.com/emargolis/911-the-mother-of-all-coincidences/

https://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/hcourant.html

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-anthrax-files/



http://www.unz.com/runz/the-life-and-legacy-of-lt-gen-william-odom/

http://www.unz.com/runz/california-and-the-end-of-white-america/

https://www.unz.com/print/

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/us/05odom.html

http://www.unz.com/runz/buckleys-unlikely-heir/

https://www.counterpunch.org/2006/09/09/the-9-11-conspiracy-nuts/

https://web.archive.org/web/20170922100023/http://www.christopherketcham.com:80/wp-content/uploads/2006/11/Israeli%20Art%20Student%20Mystery%20story,%20Salon%202002.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k43_NKYs50

https://www.counterpunch.org/2007/03/07/ketcham-s-story/

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17260.htm

https://www.counterpunch.org/2011/05/04/bin-laden-the-vindicator/

http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/16/inv.binladen.denial/

http://www.unz.com/emargolis/911-the-mother-of-all-coincidences/



[28] a best-selling book strongly suggesting =>http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/questioning-9-11-the-politician-turned-conspiracy-theorist-a-784673.html

[29] similarly argued => https://www.globalresearch.ca/ex-italian-president-intel-agencies-know-9-11-an-inside-job/7550

[30] numerous seemingly reputable academics and other experts => https://www.ae911truth.org/

[31] The New Pearl Harbor => https://www.amazon.com/New-Pearl-Harbor-Disturbing-Administration/dp/1566565529/

[32] Debunking 9/11 Debunking => https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/156656686X/

[33] The New Pearl Harbor Revisited => https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1566567297/

[34] 9/11 Contradictions => /book/david_ray_griffin__911-contradictions/

[35] David Ray Griffin => /book/author/david_ray_griffin/

[36] 9/11 Ten Years Later => /book/david_ray_griffin__911-ten-years-later/

[37] Cognitive Infiltration => /book/david_ray_griffin__cognitive-infiltration/

[38] had spent 29 years at the CIA => http://911truth.org/william-a-bill-christison-1928-2010/

[39] a remarkable 2,700 word article => http://dissidentvoice.org/Aug06/Christison14.htm

[40] one of Griffin’s books => https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/156656686X/

[41] many other highly-regarded former US intelligence officers =>https://www.organicconsumers.org/news/seven-cia-veterans-challenge-911-commission-report

[42] many dozens of articles there =>https://www.counterpunch.org/author/jurubasp4ge3uye/

[43] a C-Span broadcast of a two-hour panel discussion on the September 11th terrorist attacks =>https://www.c-span.org/video/?193155-1/september-11th-terrorist-attacks

[44] his hour-long interview => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x47IvgKba0s

[45] who heard explosions => http://911review.com/coverup/oralhistories.html

[46] to ridicule them => https://www.counterpunch.org/2006/09/09/the-9-11-conspiracy-nuts/

[47] 1997 declaration issued by the Project for the New American Century =>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century#Signatories_to_S

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/questioning-9-11-the-politician-turned-conspiracy-theorist-a-784673.html

https://www.globalresearch.ca/ex-italian-president-intel-agencies-know-9-11-an-inside-job/7550

https://www.ae911truth.org/

https://www.amazon.com/New-Pearl-Harbor-Disturbing-Administration/dp/1566565529/?tag=unco037-20

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/156656686X/?tag=unco037-20

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1566567297/?tag=unco037-20

http://911truth.org/william-a-bill-christison-1928-2010/

http://dissidentvoice.org/Aug06/Christison14.htm

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/156656686X/?tag=unco037-20

https://www.organicconsumers.org/news/seven-cia-veterans-challenge-911-commission-report

https://www.counterpunch.org/author/jurubasp4ge3uye/

https://www.c-span.org/video/?193155-1/september-11th-terrorist-attacks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x47IvgKba0s

http://911review.com/coverup/oralhistories.html

https://www.counterpunch.org/2006/09/09/the-9-11-conspiracy-nuts/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century#Signatories_to_Statement_of_Principles



[48] 25 Neocon intellectuals => https://www.haaretz.com/1.4764706

[49] America would attack and destroy seven major Muslim countries over the next few years =>https://www.globalresearch.ca/we-re-going-to-take-out-7-countries-in-5-years-iraq-syria-lebanon-libya-somalia-sudan-iran/5166

[50] President Harry S. Truman =>https://www.nytimes.com/1972/12/02/archives/letterbombs-mailed-to-truman-in-1947-truman-was-sent-bombs-book.html

[51] British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin =>https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1430766/Jewish-groups-plotted-to-kill-Bevin.html

[52] Prime Minister Winston Churchill => https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4051769,00.html

[53] a central role in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy =>http://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-the-jfk-assassination-part-ii-who-did-it/

[54] apparently those warnings were taken seriously => https://original.antiwar.com/alison-weir/2012/01/24/israeli-assassinations-and-american-presidents/

[55] the assassination of President Barack Obam => https://www.haaretz.com/1.5172285

[56] the 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem =>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing

[57] Lavon Affair of 1954 => http://www.chicagotribune.com/chi-liberty_tuesoct02-story.html

[58] strong claims => https://ifamericaknew.org/history/ref-giladi.html

[59] a deliberate air and sea attack against the U.S.S. Liberty =>http://www.chicagotribune.com/chi-liberty_tuesoct02-story.html

[60] the close Nazi-Zionist economic partnership of the 1930s =>http://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-jews-and-nazis/

[61] the Jewish Holocaust of the Second World War is either substantially or almost entirelyfraudulent => https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-holocaust-denial/

[62] publicly declared => http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23460.htm

[63] additional analyses => https://dissidentvoice.org/2011/06/demystifying-911-israel-and-the-tactics-of-mistake/

[64] he had a perfectly respectable record =>http://www.unz.com/print/author/SabroskyAlanN/

https://www.haaretz.com/1.4764706

https://www.globalresearch.ca/we-re-going-to-take-out-7-countries-in-5-years-iraq-syria-lebanon-libya-somalia-sudan-iran/5166

https://www.nytimes.com/1972/12/02/archives/letterbombs-mailed-to-truman-in-1947-truman-was-sent-bombs-book.html

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1430766/Jewish-groups-plotted-to-kill-Bevin.html

https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4051769,00.html

http://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-the-jfk-assassination-part-ii-who-did-it/

https://original.antiwar.com/alison-weir/2012/01/24/israeli-assassinations-and-american-presidents/

https://www.haaretz.com/1.5172285

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing

http://www.chicagotribune.com/chi-liberty_tuesoct02-story.html

https://ifamericaknew.org/history/ref-giladi.html

http://www.chicagotribune.com/chi-liberty_tuesoct02-story.html

http://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-jews-and-nazis/

https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-holocaust-denial/


https://dissidentvoice.org/2011/06/demystifying-911-israel-and-the-tactics-of-mistake/

http://www.unz.com/print/author/SabroskyAlanN/



[65] a much longer 2010 radio interview: => http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2010/03/full-transcript-of-sabrosky-interview.html

[66] he had the misfortune to die in a frontal collision with a tree in Holland =>https://www.veteranstodayarchives.com/2011/07/23/dutch-demolition-expert-danny-jowenko-dies-in-car-crash/

[67] the ADL soon mounted a huge and largely successful =>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_TV#Controversies

[68] Deep Truth video panel conference => http://deeptruth.info/panels/

[69] soon rebroadcast by Guns & Butter => https://soundcloud.com/guns-and-butter-1/zionism-deconstructing-the-power-paradigm-part-two-alan-sabrosky-391

[70] was soon purged from its home station =>http://gunsandbutter.org/blog/2018/08/16/guns-and-butter-banned-and-removed-from-kpfa-radio

[71] late Alan Hart => https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Hart_(writer)

[72] broke his silence in 2010 => http://www.salem-news.com/articles/may262010/hart-911kb.php

[73] his extended interview => https://www.veteranstoday.com/2018/01/18/hart/

[74] a version being available online => http://www.bollyn.com/solving-9-11-the-book

[75] “9/11 was an Israeli Job” => http://www.unz.com/article/911-was-an-israeli-job/

[76] some 200 Israeli Mossad agents =>https://web.archive.org/web/20170922100023/http://www.christopherketcham.com:80/wcontent/uploads/2006/11/Israeli%20Art%20Student%20Mystery%20story,%20Salon%2020

[77] NYC police arrested some of these agents while they were publicly celebrating the 9/11 attacks =>http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17260.htm

[78] a small Hispanic-activist website =>https://web.archive.org/web/20060615061125/http://aztlan.net:80/mexcongressterror.htm

[79] a few other places => https://rense.com/general17/mossadagentsarrested.htm

[80] 9/11 was an Israeli Job => http://www.unz.com/article/911-was-an-israeli-job/

[81] 9/11 Contradictions => http://www.unz.com/book/david_ray_griffin__911-contradictions/

[82] American Pravda: The JFK Assassination, Part II – Who Did It? =>http://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-the-jfk-assassination-part-ii-who-did-it/

http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2010/03/full-transcript-of-sabrosky-interview.html

https://www.veteranstodayarchives.com/2011/07/23/dutch-demolition-expert-danny-jowenko-dies-in-car-crash/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_TV#Controversies

http://deeptruth.info/panels/

https://soundcloud.com/guns-and-butter-1/zionism-deconstructing-the-power-paradigm-part-two-alan-sabrosky-391

http://gunsandbutter.org/blog/2018/08/16/guns-and-butter-banned-and-removed-from-kpfa-radio

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Hart_(writer)

http://www.salem-news.com/articles/may262010/hart-911kb.php

https://www.veteranstoday.com/2018/01/18/hart/

http://www.bollyn.com/solving-9-11-the-book

http://www.unz.com/article/911-was-an-israeli-job/

https://web.archive.org/web/20170922100023/http://www.christopherketcham.com:80/wp-content/uploads/2006/11/Israeli%20Art%20Student%20Mystery%20story,%20Salon%202002.htm


https://web.archive.org/web/20060615061125/http://aztlan.net:80/mexcongressterror.htm

https://rense.com/general17/mossadagentsarrested.htm

http://www.unz.com/article/911-was-an-israeli-job/

http://www.unz.com/book/david_ray_griffin__911-contradictions/

http://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-the-jfk-assassination-part-ii-who-did-it/



[83] American Pravda: Holocaust Denial => http://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-holocaust-denial/

[84] Our American Pravda => http://www.unz.com/runz/our-american-pravda/

http://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-holocaust-denial/


the unz review: an alternative media selection · the 9/11 attacks themselves had astonished me as...

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